The Dark Mail Alliance is an organization dedicated to creating an

email Electronic mail (usually shortened to email; alternatively hyphenated e-mail) is a method of transmitting and receiving Digital media, digital messages using electronics, electronic devices over a computer network. It was conceived in the ...

protocol Protocol may refer to: Sociology and politics * Protocol (politics) Protocol originally (in Late Middle English, c. 15th century) meant the minutes or logbook taken at a meeting, upon which an agreement was based. The term now commonly refers to ...

and architecture with

end-to-end encryption End-to-end encryption (E2EE) is a method of implementing a secure communication system where only communicating users can participate. No one else, including the system provider, telecom providers, Internet providers or malicious actors, can ...

. In October 2013,

Silent Circle Silent Circle is a German Eurodisco band formed in West Germany in 1985. The band consists of vocalist Martin Tychsen (Jo Jo Tyson), keyboardist & composer Axel Breitung, and drummer Jürgen Behrens (CC Behrens). History Silent Circle first ...

and

Lavabit Lavabit is an open-source encrypted webmail service, founded in 2004. The service suspended its operations on August 8, 2013, after the U.S. Federal Government ordered it to turn over its Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) private keys, in order to al ...

announced a project to create a more secure alternative to email and began a fundraising effort. The Dark Mail Alliance team originally consisted of

Phil Zimmermann Philip R. Zimmermann (born 1954) is an American computer scientist and cryptographer. He is the creator of Pretty Good Privacy (PGP), the most widely used email encryption software in the world. He is also known for his work in VoIP encryption ...

Jon Callas Jon Callas is an American computer security expert, software engineer, user experience designer, and technologist who is the co-founder and former CTO of the global encrypted communications service Silent Circle.http://www.linkedin.com/in/joncal ...

, Mike Janke, and

Ladar Levison Lavabit is an Open-source software, open-source Encryption, encrypted webmail service, founded in 2004. The service suspended its operations on August 8, 2013, after the Federal government of the United States, U.S. Federal Government ordered it ...

. , the only original member of the team still listed on the Dark Mail Alliance website is Levison.

DIME

Dark Internet Mail Environment (DIME) aims to be a secure communication platform for asynchronous messaging across the Internet. It was presented by Ladar Levison and Stephen Watt at

DEF CON DEF CON (also written as DEFCON, Defcon, or DC) is a Computer security conference, hacker convention held annually in Las Vegas Valley, Las Vegas, Nevada. The first DEF CON took place in June 1993 and today many attendees at DEF CON include comp ...

on August 8, 2014.

Specifications

There have been multiple revisions for DIME specifications. The latest revision is presented as a preliminary draft. * First public revision, December 2014 * Preliminary draft, March 2015 * Draft, June 2018

Protocols

* Dark Mail Transfer Protocol (DMTP) * Dark Mail Access Protocol (DMAP)

Data formats

* Signet Data Format * Message Data Format ( D/

MIME A mime artist, or simply mime (from Greek language, Greek , , "imitator, actor"), is a person who uses ''mime'' (also called ''pantomime'' outside of Britain), the acting out of a story through body motions without the use of speech, as a the ...

)

Implementations

Server-side

Magma is the reference MIME server implementation. It supports server side encryption,

Simple Mail Transfer Protocol The Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is an Internet standard communication protocol for electronic mail transmission. Mail servers and other message transfer agents use SMTP to send and receive mail messages. User-level email clients typ ...

(SMTP),

Post Office Protocol In computing, the Post Office Protocol (POP) is an application-layer Internet standard protocol used by e-mail clients to retrieve e-mail from a mail server. Today, POP version 3 (POP3) is the most commonly used version. Together with IMAP, ...

(POP),

Internet Message Access Protocol In computing, the Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) is an Internet standard protocol used by email clients to retrieve email messages from a mail server over a TCP/IP connection. IMAP is defined by . IMAP was designed with the goal of per ...

(IMAP) and

Hypertext Transfer Protocol HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web, wher ...

(HTTP).

Client-side

Volcano, a Thunderbird fork with DIME support.

References

{{Reflist

External links

Dark Mail Alliance web site
2013 establishments Computer security organizations Email End-to-end encryption Internet privacy organizations Privacy of telecommunications